A couple months ago, Satya Twena realized she’d really made it as a milliner: Lady Gaga posted an Instagram of herself wearing one of Twena’s hats.

“I had no idea she had my hat!” says Twena, who was on a flight to Paris when the singer posted the picture. When Twena got off the plane, her phone was buzzing. “My Instagram [was] blowing up.”

She’d only made four of the hats — a ladylike topper called the Monica Boater and made from vintage fabric — and she didn’t know how it’d ended up on the pop star’s head, but she was thrilled it was there.

“Lady Gaga has always been my dream customer. When you ask me who I would like to see in my hats, it would be her,” says Twena. “She looked so great wearing it. It was perfect.”

A post shared by Satya Twena (@satyatwena) on May 12, 2015 at 7:18pm PDT

Twena, 32, launched Satya Twena Fine Millinery in 2011 out of her East Village apartment, but her business has since taken off. Everyone from Gaga to Usher to fashion blogger Man Repeller has worn her hats.

Her customers, she says, “see a hat as an expression of something that is louder than wearing jewelry or clothing.”

But despite her crop of boldface clients, it’s the milliner’s first customer who remains the most important. In 2010, Twena had just finished a 12-week hat design class at the Fashion Institute of Technology when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. When her mom underwent chemotherapy, she lost her hair — and her self-esteem. Twena fashioned her a simple hat.

“[It was] nothing fancy [like] what I [do] now,” she recalls. “At the moment, it was just something I thought to do so she could feel better about herself.”

Twena had previously worked as an interior designer, and the transition to designing hats was natural. “Good taste is good taste,” she says.

Word-of-mouth spread among her mother’s friends, and others quickly became interested in Twena’s hats — which she makes the old-fashioned way, using steam to shape fabric around a hard mold. Soon, she was struggling to fill orders out of her fourth-floor walk-up.

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“My apartment was consumed [by] hundreds of hats,” she recalls. “I felt like I wasn’t winning, I was just breaking even. So I took three months off and went to Paris, and upon my return I said to myself, ‘No, this is what I want to do,’ and things started to fall into place.”

Anne WermielA friend gave her a lead on a 5,000-square-foot Garment District space in one of the city’s last remaining hat factories. She jumped on it and set up shop in the space in 2013. Her whole family, including her mom, came and helped her move in.

“[She] was not at her best but she still found the energy to help out,” Twena recalls.

“She cleaned the whole place down and she even did the bathroom . . . if that is not love, I don’t know what is.”

Mom is now healthy and working as an artist in California. Twena says she owes her success to her. “None of this is or was possible without her love and support,” she says. “[She taught me] to let go of fear and jump in! Life might be shorter than we expect.”